Исследовательская работа на английском языке. 10 класс. "Откуда произошли английские слова?"

МУНИЦИПАЛЬНОЕ АВТОНОМНОЕ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ОДИНЦОВСКИЙ ЛИЦЕЙ №6 ИМ. А.С.ПУШКИНА

(143000, Московская область, г.Одинцово, ул. Ново – Спортивная, д.14)

Тел.: (495) 591-10-58

КОНКУРСНАЯ РАБОТА

(Английский язык)

Откуда произошли английские слова?

(Исследование)

Выполнила:

Орлова Татьяна,

10 класс

Руководитель:

Паршина Елена Анатольевна,

учитель английского языка

МАОУ Одинцовского лицея №6 им. А.С.Пушкина

Одинцово

2013

Lyceum №6 named after A.S.Pushkin

(14, Novo–Sportivnaya street, Оdintsovo, (495)591-10-58, (495) 591-45-10)

Where Do English Words Derive From?

Research work

Done

by the student in year 10-D

Tatyana Orlova

Supervisor:

teacher of English

E.A.Parshina

Odintsovo

2013

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………...1

1. Actuality……………………………………………………………………....1
2. Problem……………………………………………………………………….1
3. Elaboration of The Problem…………………………………………………..2
4. Hypothesis…………………………………………………………………….2

2. Main Part…………………………………………………………………………...2

1. Objectives……………………………………………………………………..2
2. Tasks………………………………………………………………………….2
3. Stages of The Development…………………………………………………. 2

1. Old English…………………………………………………………….2
2. Middle English…………………………………………………………6
3. New English……………………………………………………………8

4. Methods……………………………………………………………………...10
5. Results……………………………………………………………………….10

3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………11
4. References…………………………………………………………………………12
5. Supplеmentary…………………………………………………………………….13

1. Introduction

1. Actuality

     It is universally known English is widely spoken all over the world. This language is considered to be international. But when we pronounce a word, do we know its origin? Have we ever pondered how and why it was formed? I believe a person cannot claim he knows a language without knowing its history. Here I may quote Simeon Potter’s words, a well-known British linguist of XIX century:

     “We cannot know too much about the language we speak every day of our lives… knowledge is power. The power of rightly chosen word is very great, whether these words are intended to inform, to entertain or to move.”

     But he [Simeon Potter] was not the only  person who was concerned about the subject. Here we can also mention F. Müller, D. Diringer, and some Russian linguists as V. Arakin, R. Reznik, M. Gukhman.

     However a lot of other people including English teachers and students take an interest in the topic. Therefore results of my research can be useful to them.

     As for me I enjoy studying all the aspects of the language but its derivation seems to be the most intriguing.

2. Problem

     The problem has been on the agenda for quite a long time. Throughout all the history people have been concerned about their origin and the origin of their language in particular.

     Despite the fact that nowadays the realm is rather deep investigated, it is not widespread among all those connected with English.

     Moreover, even if a person is aware of the main features of the forming process, he might not know the causes.

3. Elaboration of The Problem

     During my research I examined two areas basically. Those were the English history and the history of the language. While researching I also tried to find out the bound between them.

    In addition there were two main papers I relied on. They are ‘History of The English Language’ by V. Arakin and ‘A History of The English Language’ by R. Reznik.

4. Hypothesis

     The language is a reflection of history that reproduces all stages of its development.    

2. Main Part

1. Objectives:

     To delve deeply into history and to study the language regarding it not as an isolated system but as a natural mechanism that cannot be separated from the human’s mind and history.

2. Tasks:

1. To speculate about a complicated structure of the language in order to make its usage meditative and deliberate.
2. To study the process and causes of forming modern English.
3. To examine how historical events influenced the development of the language.

3. Stages Of The Development

     In my research work I’d like to tell you about the history and derivation of English words. The language is referred to Germanic languages. It was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the most widely used language in the world.

     Its history is rather rich. It is presented in three periods: the Old English, the Medieval English and the New English. I’m going to represent all the periods, so let’s start with the very beginning.

     The roots of the language originated in Germanic North Sea and were brought to the British Isles by German tribes. Those tribes were Angles, Saxons and Jutes. They encroached upon the Isles after the Romans had lost their power. So, their language was the Old English.

1.  Old English

     The period of the Old English epoch lasted from 450 to 1066 AD. During that time the language was normally developing like any other Germanic language. The direction of the developing was determined by the overall steadiness of the historical period. The vocabulary of the Old English was rather extensive. It contained about 50 000 words. These words were mainly native. They could be divided into a number of strata.

1. Language structure

1. Stratum I

Mutual Indo-European derivation

     This stratum is the oldest one. The roots of the words came from ancient times at the dawn of all the Indo-European languages. Thus, we can find related words in various languages of this group. I will show it to you using some languages including Russian as an example.

     Certainly we can’t claim all these words to be exactly of the same meaning due to the time passed. But anyway they have obviously mutual roots.

2. Stratum II

Mutual Germanic derivation

     This layer is relatively more recent. These words were derived during the later historical period when separation between Indo-European language groups became more and more denotable. Such words can be found mostly in Germanic language groups.

3. Stratum III

     The third stratum was made up of words that existed only in English, for instance, the word clypian (to call), the root preserved in the now somewhat obsolete word yclept (named).

     The word woman belongs to this stratum too. It derived from the words wif and man:

wifman        wimman         woman

     To be perfectly honest this layer is the poorest one.

2. Means of enriching vocabulary

     In the curse of time the language was changing. New words appeared while old ones were forgotten. Generally speaking, there are two ways of enriching the vocabulary. The first one is fulfilled with the internal means. In this case words are inherent in the language. They were formed during interchanges within the nation itself.

     But taking into account active relationships between different peoples in those times the most popular means of enriching the Old English vocabulary were called the external means. In this case new words appeared during contacts between different tribes, countries, regions, etc. Let’s start with the internal means anyway.

1. Internal means

     Internal means includes word derivation and word composition. Word derivation consists of primarily affixation and vowel interchanging.

• Primarily affixation

      There were a lot of different affixes in those times. I will present you few ones which are still preserved in the language. Here are the Old English words and in brackets you can see the modern relevant ones.

• noun suffixes of concrete nouns:

     These suffixes helped to derive noun from noun

• noun suffixes of abstract  nouns:

     These suffixes helped to derive abstract nouns from nouns or adjectives

• adjective suffixes: 

     These suffixes were used to derive adjectives from nouns.

• noun suffixes:

     This suffix was used to derive a noun from a verb.

• prefixes:

     Apparently that almost all the affixes have remained the same meaning till nowadays.

• Vowel interchanging                        

     In this case relevant nouns and verbs had different vowels in their roots.

• Word composition

     In this situation words were composed together to form a new one. Here are some simple examples:

• nouns: gold+smið (goldsmith), Engla+land (land of the Angles, England)
• ajectives: ic+ceald (ice-cold)

2. External means

     In this case new words appeared during contacts between peoples.

• Latin borrowings: pound, inch, pepper, cheese, wine, apple, street, devil, apostle, monk, master, school, lion, tiger, plant, astronomy.
• Celtic borrowings: Avon, Esk.

     Summing up it should be stated that the Old English was a language of a developing nation. It had its own features and direction of progress.

2. Middle English

     The vocabulary was very instable in this period. It was constantly changing.

1. Internal Means

     Though almost all the affixes of the Old period were preserved they were not widely used in order to form new vocabulary.  Generally speaking, we can observe mostly word composition. In the Middle Period appeared various adverbs  like these:

Anywhere ( any+wher(e))

Beforehand (before+hand)

Meanwhile  (meen/meien+whil(e))

Already (all+re(a)dy)

2. External Means

1. Scandinavian borrowings.

    Anyway it should be mentioned that there were different conditions of various borrowings:

• Sometimes the English language borrowed a word having the same synonym. Those words were simply added to the vocabulary: law- act, canon, ordinance, principle, statute; fellow- boy, guy, lad, and chap.
• The English word was ousted by the borrowing: taken instead of niman, callen instead of clypian.
• Both variants were preserved but became different in meaning: heaven and sky, starve and die.
• Sometimes the native word and the borrowed word can be etymological doublets. That means that they have the same ancient roots.

2. French borrowings.

• Government and legislature

     Government, noble, baron, prince, duke, court, justice, judge, crime, prison, condemn, sentence, parliament.

• Military life

     Army, battle, peace, victory, general, colonel.

• Religion

      Religion, prey, saint.

• City crafts

      Painter, tailor.

• Pleasure and entertainment

     Music, art, feast, pleasure, leisure, supper, dinner, pork, beef, mutton.

• Daily life

     Air, place, river, large, age, boil, branch, chair, table, choice, cry, cost.

• Relationships

      Aunt, uncle, nephew, cousin.

     The place of the French borrowings within the English language was different:

•      A word might have been borrowed from the French to denote notions unknown to the English up to the time: government, parliament, general, colonel.
•      The English synonyms were ousted by the French borrowings.

• Both words were preserved, but their styles are different.

     Obviously the French borrowings are mostly bookish, but there are some exceptions: foe (native) and enemy (French borrowing).

•      Sometimes words had the same meaning but different origin.

•       There are calques on the French phrases:

3. New English (since 1500)

     The vocabulary was growing very rapidly and the actual amount of words started being impossible to estimate.

1. Internal Means

     In order to create new words people used affixes. During that period they became almost as popular as they had been during the Old period.

1. Suffixes –er, - ing, -man became really popular for making up nouns:

• To denote a doer (from a verb): discoverer, driver, and owner.
• To denote a doer (from a noun): chairman, coachman, airman.
• To denote an action (from a verb): farming, firing, spelling.
• Suffix -ing was also used to form various adjectives: amazing, corresponding, shining.

2. British also distinguished some suffixes from French borrowings of the Middle period.

     Here they are:  -ment, -ity, -ance (-ence), -age, -ee, -ist, -ism for nouns;  –(a)ble, -ic(al), -al, -ous, -ive for adjectives. There also appeared prefixes re- and dis-: amazement, ability, shortage, addressee, drinkable, reform, dissatisfy.

3. New words also appeared by means of word composition.

     They are: dressmaker, hairdresser, sightseer, blackboard, man-of-war, jack-in-office, happy-go-lucky, matter-of-fact.

4. Another means of word building was reducing: gent- gentleman, cab-cabriolet, wig-periwig

5. There also existed a way of word building without any affixes:

• In this case a word could be for example a noun and a verb at a time: a bomb – to bomb, calm - to calm.
• Some nouns which were derived from names:

     Astrakhan – from Astrakhan, Russian town where it was made.

     Jersey – from the name of an island where a special kind of wool was produced.

2. External Means

     This period can be subdivided into The Early New English period (XV-XVII) and The Late New English (XVIII-XX).

6. The Early New English

     During this sub period literary norms were established.

• Latin borrowings

     There also appeared some etymological doublets:

• Italian borrowings: balcony, fresco, violin, piano.
• Spanish borrowings:  cargo, canyon (cañόn), savannah (sabana), tornado.
• French borrowings: ball, billet, ballet, intrigue, fatigue, naive.

7. The Late New English

• German borrowings: kindergarten, wagon, boy, girl, waltz.
• French borrowings: machine, magazine, garage, engine.
• Indian borrowings: bungalow, jungle, indigo.
• Chinese borrowings: tea, coolie.
• Arabic borrowings: caravan, divan, alcohol, algebra, coffee, bazaar, cotton, orange, candy, chess.
• Russian borrowings:

     Before the October revolution: borzoi, samovar, tsar, taiga

     After the Revolution: Soviet, Bolshevik, kolkhoz, sputnik, perestroika.

• Greek and Latin based words: telegraph, telephone, telefax, microphone, sociology, politology, electricity. Such words are mainly scientific.

4. Methods

     When studying the language structure I tried to analyze how words were completed, when and what for. I also tried to study the functions of some suffixes and the time of its appearing with the help of various dictionaries. There are two charts in the supplementary which illustrate some outcomes of the research.

    Next, in order to examine the process and causes of forming the modern language, I studied dictionaries of some Indo-European languages in order to reveal the bond between them and English. Some results of this research can be seen in the supplementary.

     Concerning the connection between the history of the nation and the English language history, I became absorbed into both the areas in order to analyze mutual causes and effects.        

5. Results

1.      While studying the language structure I noted that each affix had not only a single meaning. Therefore I decided to distinguish two of the most popular affixes and classify their functions according to the time of the appearing. (See Supplementary I)
2.      While studying the process of word formation which includes external means, that are borrowings, I found out that there are a lot of kindred words in different languages. Thus I have made several diagrams to illustrate it. ( See Supplementary II)         
3.      So, after having tried to penetrate the history of the language, I tried to reveal its bond with the history of the nation.

1.      Since the tribes worshiped various gods and heavenly bodies they named days of the week after some of them:

• Sunnandæʒ [Sunne (sun) – Sunday(a day of the sun)]
• Mōnandæʒ [Mōna (moon) – Monday(a day of the moon)]
• Tiwesdæʒ [Tiw (a god of war) – Tuesday( a day of Tiw)]
• Wednesdæʒ[Wōdan (a god of wind and storm) – Wednesday]
• Þunresdæʒ[Þunor (a god of thunder, later Þunor was replaced by Thor, relevant Scandinavian god) – Thursday]
• Frïdæʒ[Fri(a goddess of love) – Friday]
• Sæternesdæʒ [Sætern(from Latin Saturnus) – Saturday]

2.      When the German tribes came to the Isles they met there the native people called Celts. Since the levels of tribes’ development were nearly the same Celts had nothing to be borrowed except geographical names. Celtic Llyndūn meant ‘a castle by the river’. Tatsit knew that name but he used the Roman version Londinium in his papers. Later it was converted into London.
3.      In the XV century that was the epoch of Renaissance many Italian words were taken. But not all the words were connected with the arts. Due to economic prosperity in Italy there were other words borrowed. One of the most significant is the word “bankrupt”. It was formed from the Italian phrase banca rotta that meant “a broken table”. When a money lander could not pay to his creditors they broke his table to show their protest.
4.      Another evidence of the dependence is the fact that there appeared two words for policeman: bobby (speaking), peeler (slang)

     Both were created due to the minister whose name was Robert Peel. He was the very person who reformed British police organization. Thus, “bobby” is short for Robert, while “peeler” is his surname plus the suffix -er.

     To tell the truth there are a lot of various examples of the bond, but even few of them are enough to prove that, I suppose.

3. Conclusion

     So, some examples of complicated forming of the language structure, its dependence on historical events and the affinity with other languages have just been regarded. All the parts of the research illustrate that there is an unbroken bone between people, their history and the language.

     Moreover, it should be mentioned that the results of the research can be used at English lessons in order to study the language origin.

      I also would like to continue the research for this topic cannot be confined. On the next stage I am going to delve even deeper than I did and examine different parts of speech and their derivation in details.

4. References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_England

4. Cussans, Thams. "Kings and Queens of the British Isles". The Times Books, 2002.

5. Аракин В. Д. История английского языка: Учебное пособие. – 2-е изд. – М.: ФИЗМАТЛИТ, 2003.

6. Резник Р. В., Сорокина Т. А., Резник И. В. A History Of The English Language. История английского языка: Учебное пособие. – М.: Флинта: Наука, 2001.

7. Hornby A. S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. – Oxford.: Oxford University Press, 2010.

As I got interested in the topic I have decided to make a survey in order to learn what my friends and acquaintances know about it.

1. My first question was about the periods of the language history.

• 45% are aware of The Old period
• 16%  guess about The Middle period
• 36% have heard of  The New period

2. The second question was about means of enriching the vocabulary.

• 4% know about word composition
• 22% do not have any idea
• 35% mentioned primarily  affixation
• 39% named borrowings

3. In conclusion I asked them about the group the language is referred to.

• 9% do not know it
• 17% claim it is Romanic
• 35% know that it is Germanic
• 39% think it is European